Public Perceptions of Collaborative Governance in Transportation Policy

• Author: Elisabeth R. Gerber,Iris Hui,Bruce E. Cain
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912920943954
• Subject Matter: Articles

2021, Vol. 74(4) 899 –912

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920943954

Political Research Quarterly

© 2020 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912920943954

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Article

U.S. local governments increasingly find themselves on

the front lines of public policy challenges that extend

beyond their geographic boundaries and organizational

capacities.1 Problems such as traffic congestion, poor air

quality, rising sea levels, wildfires, drought and floods,

and public health emergencies require actions and poli-

cies that traverse both traditional jurisdictional lines and

the domains of diverse private-sector stakeholders. In

recent years, local governments have increasingly turned

to collaborative regional governance as a means for for-

mally including stakeholder groups and members of the

public in governmental decision making around these

challenging regional issues.2 As compared with collab-

orative regional government (CGovt) in which public

officials from different jurisdictions forge mutual agree-

ments on behalf of their separate communities, collabor-

ative governance (CGovn) broadens the opportunities of

non-officials to observe and participate directly in policy

formulation (Ansell and Gash 2008; Emerson, Nabatchi,

and Balogh 2012; Newman et al. 2004).

CGovn has been deployed in various U.S. policy

domains, including natural resource management (e.g.,

watersheds and forestry), infrastructure permitting (e.g.,

water systems and public transit), and land-use planning

processes (Emerson and Gerlak 2014; Hardy and Koontz

2010; Lubell, Henry, and McCoy 2010; Luyet et al. 2012;

Margerum and Robinson 2015; Newig and Fritsch 2009).

As a consequence, there are now more opportunities for

citizens and groups not just to monitor and give input to

elected bodies such as city councils and county boards

but also to serve on collaborative policy-making bodies

dealing with specific, often technical issues such as trans-

portation policy, the issue we focus on in this paper.

This movement from government by elected officials

to more inclusive governance is motivated by various

considerations such as the desire to avoid potential litiga-

tion by securing stakeholder buy-in prior to implement-

ing a decision, the quest for better grassroots information

and localized expertise, and the expectation that broader

inclusion will enhance public assessments of the policy-

making process (Donahue and Zeckhauser 2012; Freeman

1997; Rogers and Weber 2010; Scott and Thomas 2017).

The expansion of policy making across both jurisdic-

tional boundaries and the public–private divide raises cen-

tral questions of accountability, consent, and legitimacy.

943954PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920943954Political Research QuarterlyCain et al.

research-article2020

1Stanford University, CA, USA

2University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

Corresponding Author:

Iris Hui, The Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford

University, 473 Via Ortega, Room 172, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Email: irishui@stanford.edu

Public Perceptions of Collaborative

Governance in Transportation Policy

Bruce E. Cain1, Elisabeth R. Gerber2, and Iris Hui1

Abstract

Despite the widespread use and extensive studies of collaborative governance in the United States, we still know

too little about how the public at large evaluates the formal inclusion of private stakeholders in collaborative decision

making. We examine this question by conducting a series of survey experiments about the function, composition, and

power of a proposed regional transportation board. The survey results reveal that while our respondents generally

favored collaborative governance (i.e., public officials with private stakeholders) over collaborative government (i.e., public

officials only), it was largely due to the inclusion of private citizens, not the stakeholder group representatives. This

finding is consistent with a populist framework that presumes that interest group influences tend to impede or distort

the will of the electoral majority and that favors functionally delimited mandates and limited power for non-elected

decision-making bodies. This has important implications for the design and public acceptance of future collaborative

government arrangements.

Keywords

collaborative governance, transportation management, regionalism, representation, institutional design, citizen

participation in governments